This document provides guidance on the defining features of HPSR and the critical steps in conducting research in this field. The audience is researchers and research users, teachers and students, particularly those working in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). It provides guidance on the defining features of HPSR and the critical steps in conducting research in this field. It showcases the diverse range of research strategies and methods encompassed by HPSR, and it provides examples of good quality and innovative HPSR papers.

 

This document illuminates the range of health policy analysis studies that have been conducted in LMICs, highlights relevant theory, and points to new directions for such work. The primary objective of the reader is to encourage and deepen health policy analysis work in LMICs. It includes methodological and analytical pointers and considers how to use health policy analysis prospectively to support health policy change.

The Global Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health Policy Survey tracks country progress in adopting WHO recommendations in national policies, strategies, laws, guidelines, reports that are relevant to the areas of sexual and reproductive health, maternal and newborn health, child health, adolescent health, gender-based violence and cross-cutting issues. The results of the fifth round of RMNCAH Policy Survey, conducted in 2018-2019, are available on the Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health and Ageing data portal. The results of this global survey should serve as a benchmark for countries and help focus national efforts to implement strong, evidence-informed, equity-focused policies at the country level that span the continuum of care in SRMNCAH.

This document aims to promote greater understanding of the varied health policy and systems research approaches that can be applied to human resources for health (HRH). It provides resources that can be used for teaching and capacity development on HRH for researchers and practitioners alike. Key literature and teaching materials are provided.

 

Countdown to 2030 produced three brief documents to summarize these topics: health policy analysis, health systems analysis, and contextual factors.

The Countdown to 2030 Policy and Program Timeline Tool is one approach to document changes in a country’s Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (RMNCH) policy, programmes, and implementation over time in an effort to see how these changes have contributed to women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health. The Countdown to 2030 Policy and Program Timeline Tool has been updated from the original Countdown to 2015 tools. The general aim of the tool is to understand through a standardised process, what health policy and systems factors have contributed to change (or the lack thereof) in RMNCAH in countries working with the Countdown to 2030 collective.

Access the program policy timeline tool protocol

Access a template of the updated tool

Access the video tutorial about the tool

The Health Policy Tracer Indicators Dashboard provides a systematic overview of the policy tracer indicators across the RMNCH continuum of care for a country by examining changes in these indicators from 1990 to present. The tool assesses and describes which RMNCH interventions have been translated into national-level policies (i.e. policy formulation component of the heuristic), and its visual output uses a “traffic light” colour coding system to illustrate if a policy has been fully (green) or partially (yellow) adopted, or does not exist (red). To access the information, go to the WHO MNCAH Policy data portal and click on "indicators" to access information.

This article provides context for the tool with detailed steps to guide implementation.

 

The Health System Implementation Readiness Barometer aims to identify good and bad performing districts or regions in order to understand why there is subnational variation in implementation of RMNCH interventions, with a focus on service availability and service readiness. The tool uses tracer indicators measuring the WHO health system building blocks — health financing, workforce, commodities, and facilities — overlaid with a heat map of health outcomes in a country showing subnational variation in RMNCH outcomes.

This article provides context for the tool with detailed steps to guide implementation.

The Accountability Measurement Tool aims to facilitate measurement of accountability processes or specific interventions by implementers. Presented in a paper by Martin Hilber and colleagues (2020), it aims to allow those who engage in RMNCAH accountability mechanisms or service delivery to conduct a self-reflection exercise to assess the potential efficacy of their efforts. By working through the tool, stakeholders can assess the results they contribute to, how and why their actions are working to increase accountability towards health-related outcomes or sustainability of an intervention, as well as what may need strengthening to show better results.

 

 

The "Most Significant Change" approach is a participatory method of collecting and analyzing stories from the field, which focuses on monitoring intermediate outcomes and impact. It provides a simple means of making sense of a large amount of complex information and is best suited to large-scale, open-ended projects, which would otherwise be difficult to monitor easily using traditional methods.

The process involves the collection of stories of change from a wide range of people in the communities where a specific project was implemented, followed by the systematic selection and prioritization of the most significant stories by designated stakeholders and staff based on criteria they determine for selection. Through the criteria setting and story selection, Most Significant Change allows stakeholders to input their values and subjective attitudes towards what constitutes significant change in a program. This methodology then “delivers a rich picture of what is happening, rather than an overly simplified picture where organizational, social and economic developments are reduced to a single number” (Davies & Dart, 2005).

Download the Most Significant Change guidebook.

In this video Asha George and Mary Kinney from University of the Western Cape in South Africa provide an overview of health policy analysis [1 hour]. This webinar was an internal presentation for Countdown to 2030 partner organizations, but it may be useful to anyone who wants to learn more about how to conduct health policy analysis.

In this video, Dr. Asha George, a professor of health systems at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, presents highlights from her paper titled "Are rhetorical commitments to adolescents reflected in content analysis of adolescent sexual and

This tutorial explains the  Policy and Programme Timeline Tool, which aims to document changes in a country’s health policy, programmes, and implementation over time and provide a basis for reviewing how these changes have contributed to women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health.